blog week 3

Caroline Kiriga: Blog Week 3

 

Bringing 'Human-Centered Design' Forward

 

Human Centered Design is an approach that integrates multidisciplinary expertise towards enhancing human well being and empowering people. It leads to systems, machines, products, services and processes that are physically, perceptually, cognitively and emotionally intuitive to use. In other words HCD is based on the needs of people. It's an approach to problem solving that brings together generating, building, and testing to create more effective solutions.

Organizational groups such as IDEO (which is a design consultancy that creates impact through design)  have chronicled many times on  great ideas that easily fall through the cracks of well-intentioned projects to address poverty through human centered design in order to generate positive outcomes. IDEO's main aim is to spread human-centered design principles by working directly with a wide spectrum of players and a diverse set of project categories to address poverty alleviation and associated factors such as health, financial services, gender equity, water and sanitation, and agriculture.

Globally, progress is being made towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on Water and Sanitation. However, in many cities the situation is getting worse. By 2030, it is expected that 60% of the world's population will live in urban areas and 180,000 people are added to the global urban population every day. Most reside in informal urban settlements and slums and face many problems, including inadequate water and sanitation. Many are constantly stressed about finding enough affordable and safe water. WSUP (Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor) is a project that has helped improve access to clean water for impoverished people in African and Asian countries.

 

WSUP is currently prototyping sanitation products, services, and businesses for people living in poor urban communities to understand the nuances of delivering solutions that are both desirable and convenient for low-income people. The WSUP project in conjunction with other community organizations  has managed to improve access to clean water for more than 500,000 people living in slams. WSUP stresses that a key part of the process is working with partner organizations to understand their customers' needs and aspirations around clean water so as to drive behavior change.

 

There has been an increasing interest in social innovation and human-centered design within the social sector and designers are very enthusiastic to apply their skills to address challenges related to poverty.  IDEO  is working with nonprofits organizations, foundations, and social enterprises  that are focused on improving the life of low-income communities  e.g. through poverty eradication to address their toughest challenges.

Link to this article: Water and Sanitation for the urban poor.